


Just Asking

by Crowgirl



Series: Timeline [1]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Age Difference, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Not Beta Read, Overthinking, Worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-03-01 04:31:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13287033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowgirl/pseuds/Crowgirl
Summary: For the Twelvetide Drabbles 2017 prompt:"Act your age."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Catchclaw](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/gifts).



The jeweller folds his hands and stands quietly behind the counter as James considers the rings. 

They’re all a little -- sparkly. He’s not used to thinking in terms of things that people are supposed to notice.

The jeweller clears his throat. ‘Is there a problem, sir? We do have a larger selection, if--’

‘No, no.’ James shakes his head and reaches out to brush his fingertips over the silver and stones in front of him. His knuckles are still bruised from a last encounter with a stubborn door. He looks at his hand on the rings for a minute -- the scar over his wrist, the bitten-short nails -- and thinks about Q’s hands: smooth, quick, unmarked by anything except too much time on a keyboard and the occasional tea-stain. 

James frowns slightly and pulls a ring free of the velvet tray: a slim silver band with a single diamond set deep in the metal. Well, if Q doesn’t _want_ to take it, he doesn’t have to. Of course. James is just … asking. Q can answer any way he pleases. 


	2. Chapter 2

James slips on his sunglasses as he leaves the jewellers’ which is the only thing that keeps him from starting -- most unprofessionally -- when Q speaks.

‘Now, I did wonder what you were up to on your lunch breaks--’ Q pushes himself away from a lamp-post where he’s apparently been lounging and watching James through the store window. ‘--but I hadn’t thought of jewelry.’

James swallows, trying to convince his heart to stop pounding as though he’d just run up from the river. ‘Is this your field test again?’

Q rolls his eyes and tucks his hand in the crook of James’ elbow, matching stride with him easily. It never fails to make something catch in James’ throat, the easy trust Q displays in being willing to be so _public._ Before being with Q -- before the last three years -- James would have said he hadn’t given same-sex couples in public a second thought. He had never been part of one himself, of course, but what was there to look at really? Two men or two women instead of a man and a woman; almost undoubtedly _not_ the most interesting thing in any given London street. Had a job required him to romance a man, fine -- it never had, so far, but he couldn’t see an issue. Now he realises he had been whistling in the dark, so to speak; the first time Q had taken his hand in public, James had nearly tripped over a curbstone.

They walk for a block in silence before Q clears his throat. ‘So do I have to pick your pocket or are you going to tell me.’

‘Hm?’ James feels Q pat the pocket where the ring box is. ‘Oh. I was getting a pair of cufflinks cleaned.’

Q says nothing and they walk on but James is aware that this no longer feels like a comfortable silence. Q takes a breath once or twice as though he’s going to say something but doesn’t. James’ hunch is confirmed when Q pulls his hand free when they pause at a street crossing and doesn’t return it. 

* * *

They walk silently almost all the way back to MI5; Q finally speaks when they’re within sight of the building.

‘You’re a bad liar, James,’ Q says in the same tone he might use to ask if James had a good lunch or was interested in watching the match that evening.

‘What?’ James had been thinking absently about dinner and whether Q might prefer going out for a change and the comment catches him entirely off-guard. 

Q stops and turns to face him, hands deep in his own trouser pockets. ‘Every thought you have shows.’

That’s simply not true and doesn’t seem to have any relation to Q’s previous remark and James is about to protest when Q says, ‘So if we’re done here, you might be courteous enough to tell me to my face.’ 

James blinks, then takes off his sunglasses. Q doesn’t look drunk or high -- he does look tired and James is about to ask if he’s been getting enough sleep lately when Q rakes a hand back through his hair, leaving the tangle a little wilder than before, and adds: ‘And please don’t repeat the nonsense about the cufflinks. Give me a little more credit than that.’

James buys himself time by carefully folding his glasses and tucking them back in the breast pocket of his jacket. Q is entirely in earnest to judge by his expression and his stance -- carefully _not_ aggressive but definitely defensive -- and James tries to think if they had a disagreement that he’s forgotten about or-- ‘What do you think I’ve been up to?’ he asks cautiously, aware that he’s missing something -- and has been overlooking it for quite some time, to judge from Q’s expression.

‘I can’t imagine. Perhaps your new lady friend likes diamonds? Or sapphires, so she’ll match your eyes?’

‘What on--’ James stops himself and resists the urge to shake his head like a cat getting water out of its ears. This entire afternoon has taken a turn into the absolutely unreal and he has no idea why. ‘ You think I’m _cheating_ on you?’

Q shrugs and shakes his head. ‘I don’t want to--’

‘Then why the hell do you!’

‘You’ve been -- _off_ since you came back from Romania and everyone knows about that engineer you had to spend so much time with and now she’s here and this new -- _fascination_ with jewelry shops--’

‘I’m not _fascinated_ with jewelry shops!’

‘Oh, really? Then why visit six different ones in the course of two weeks?’

‘For _you,_ you git!’ James wrenches the box out of his pocket and shakes it in Q’s face. 

Q blinks. ‘...What?’

James pulls one of Q’s hands out of his pockets and slaps the box into his palm. ‘For _you.’_

Q fumbles with the box, then manages to open it and stares at the ring neatly held in a bed of dark blue satin. ‘I… James, I…’ All the defensiveness drains out of him and Q looks back up at James with wide, dark eyes, all the assurance of the last few moments gone.

‘Whatever else I may have done in the course of a long and varied career in her majesty’s service,’ James says, stepping closer to Q so he can lower his voice and aware at the same moment that he is very, very angry. ‘I have _never_ lied to you.’

* * *

They have a briefing together later that afternoon -- in company with most of Q Branch and half a dozen other field agents -- and James makes sure to come in late and leave early, slipping out while Q is occupied answering questions. 

* * *

James stops by the off-licence nearest his flat on the way home and treats himself to an excellent bottle of single-malt he’s had his eye on for some weeks. The shopkeeper compliments his taste and offers a few suggestions for accompaniments; James thanks him but has every intention of ignoring them. The half of a leftover curry he has in the fridge is merely the appetizer; the whiskey is the meal. 

* * *

He doesn’t bother changing clothes when he gets home, just slings his suit jacket over the back of a kitchen chair, and downs the curry standing up, much as he might take a preventative aspirin before a meeting with M. He pours a glass of whiskey, and takes the bottle through with him into the living room.

James sits down on his couch, picks up the remote, and turns on the television to whatever happens to be playing on the channel it had been on when he turned it off last. He doesn’t really want to watch anything in particular; he just wants noise so he doesn’t keep going over and over and _over_ the conversation with Q. He’s replayed it in his head so often as it is that the memory is starting to feel threadbare and he’s damn near given himself a migraine. So he turns his attention to the single malt. 

It really is excellent stuff and he lets himself savor the first two or three mouthfuls, then gets straight to business and drains the glass. He polishes off two more glasses in the same fashion and cradles the fourth against his chest, trying to figure out what it is he’s watching. There’s a man in very fashionably worn jeans and a button-down shirt walking through an art gallery and James watches with a faint sense of disbelief as the man takes a carefully casual seat on a bench with a large Turner seascape on the wall behind him. 

What had he said to Q? _‘A heap of old rubbish’_ or something like that -- of course, at the time he’d thought Q was an art student trying to strike up a conversation, not his new quartermaster. 

The man on the screen has turned sideways, gesturing to the painting as he speaks to the camera and James feels he really should be too old to get maudlin over an accidental documentary. But here he is back where he’s been all afternoon, wondering how long Q has been mistrusting him, what he had first done or left undone that had set Q wondering, why the hell Q hadn’t _said_ something rather than stewing in silence for God knows how long. Perhaps he should have made more effort today, stopped by Q’s office or the lab or-- no. No, it was almost always better to let Q have his rage out in quiet. The last thing James wanted for either of them was a domestic in the middle of MI5 and he had been too angry to trust himself, to say nothing of Q. As it was, this was a misunderstanding, an argument turned passingly sour -- they had been here before and, much to his surprise, come out of it. There’s a voice in the back of his head that wants to argue that this is it, this, at long last, is it: Q has had it with the vagaries of being a field agent’s lover and this is it. James shakes his head briskly, making his ears ring slightly, and finishes the whiskey. If nothing he’s done up to now has made Q run for the hills, then whatever this misunderstanding is surely won’t be the final straw.

* * *

James turns on his bedroom light more out of habit than anything else and stays where he is out of tipsy shock. 

Q mumbles and flings up one hand against the light, then turns over, squinting at him. ‘Sorry -- sorry, I didn’t mean to fall asleep.’ He clears his throat and kicks the sheet away, twisting on his side and propping his head on his elbow, his other hand draped teasingly over his groin, like something off the cover of a Barbara Cartland novel. 

‘What are you doing here?’ James asks, pleased that his voice sounds steady.

‘What does it look like?’

‘I have no idea.’ 

‘I thought you said you didn’t lie unless you had to.’ James has no idea what his face looks like but it’s enough to kill the half-smile Q had been going for. Q sits up, all posing gone. ‘Sorry. I -- sorry. About earlier.’

‘Yes. Well.’ James clears his throat. ‘So am I. Apparently.’

‘Apparently?’

‘Since I seem to have left you with the impression I’m…’ James clears his throat again and waves a hand, unspeakably irritated to find that he seems to be near tears. It must be the whiskey -- all that bloody single malt. He hasn’t sat down with the intention of getting drunk in so long, he’s apparently forgotten how to do it. 

‘No. James--’ Q scrambles forward to the edge of the bed and holds out his hands. James takes a step towards him, then stops. 

‘What _are_ you doing here?’

‘I came to apologize. This afternoon -- it was all my fault. I got in a strop this morning and I came out looking for you and I took it out on you.’ Q sinks back on the bed and flips the sheet over his legs, covering himself to the waist. ‘So. That’s what I came for.’

James licks his lips; his mouth feels tacky with liquor. ‘I haven’t seen that woman since Romania.’

‘I know you haven’t.’

‘Then _why--’_

‘Been listening to too much office gossip,’ Q cuts him off. ‘That’s all. Too much white noise. Not enough signal. There was just--’ He waves a hand airily. ‘Just too much of it this morning, that’s all.’

‘Office gossip has me fucking a Romanian engineer?’ James can’t hide the disbelief in his voice and doesn’t try very hard. Stranger things have been said about him over the course of his career, he’s sure, but this is the first one to get on Q’s nerves in quite this fashion.

Q fusses with a fold of the sheet, looking down at it rather than up at James. ‘Well -- fucking _someone,_ anyway.’

‘And I am,’ James points out.

‘Yes, well--’ Q clears his throat, tucking the sheet in around his knee. ‘But they don’t know _who.’_

There’s something here James isn’t catching -- something very obvious that he isn’t realizing and he shakes his head hard, welcoming the nauseating whirl of the room as a false moment of sobriety. He steadies himself with one hand against the doorjamb and swallows hard. ‘But -- _you_ know --’

‘Well, yes, of course, _I_ know but -- James, you look dreadful --’

James holds up a hand. ‘No, no -- no, wait.’ The thought is there -- just barely out of his reach now and if he can stay quiet for just another few moments-- ‘You _silly_ sod.’

Q’s eyebrows shoot up. ‘Pardon?’

‘Why do you think I bought you the damned thing?’

‘Which damned thing would that be?’

‘The sodding -- _ring --’_ James glares around the room but his vision is too fuzzy. ‘Where is it? I know you have it.’ 

‘There.’ Q points to the nightstand and James lurches across to pick the box up which he manages on the third try. ‘Christ, James, what have you been drinking--’

James fumbles the ring out of the box and catches Q’s hand -- he hopes it’s the right one and the right finger but he can’t be entirely sure. _‘There,_ you stubborn bastard.’

 _‘I’m_ a stubborn-- Are you supposed to swear at me when you’re proposing?’ 

James ignores all of this, just presses the best kiss he’s capable of to Q’s knuckles. ‘You can go back in tomorrow and flash this in all their faces and tell them James bloody Bond bought it for you because he’s a romantic old fool.’

 _‘Drunken_ old fool, maybe,’ Q says, catching James’s hands and pulling him onto the bed. ‘Mine either way.’ 

**Author's Note:**

> If you're at all concerned about Q's reply: [Nor Cowardly In Retire](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6232693).


End file.
